


The Wilderness

by gamerfic



Category: Changeling: The Lost
Genre: Crueltide, Don't Have to Know Canon, Gen, Horror, Hunters & Hunting, Misses Clause Challenge, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-09 17:50:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8905678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gamerfic/pseuds/gamerfic
Summary: I know exactly who I am.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kastaka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kastaka/gifts).



It starts with a dead deer, like my work usually does.

I notice the carcass on the shoulder of County M not long after I begin my daily patrol. I pull up behind it and switch on the overheads so no one rear-ends me coming around the bend in the road. The deer lies just past the solid white line marking the edge of the cracked asphalt, neither blocking the road nor concealed by thick brush in the ditch. An eight-point buck, its coat dark with dried blood, its body cold and stiff in the chill of a late October morning.

Even before I climb out of my truck I know something's wrong. Any vehicle hitting a buck of this size would need to be towed away from the scene of the accident, and no poacher would willingly leave behind such an impressive rack of antlers. I grab a camera from the glove box and pat my .357 in its holster as I approach. A single perfect rifle shot to the throat felled this creature, but there's no pool of blood beneath it, no trail of red leading out of the trees. It bled out elsewhere. Someone dragged the carcass out of the forest and left it here, untouched, for me to find.

The hair on the back of my neck prickles. I'm suddenly, bizarrely certain someone is watching me from beyond the treeline. It takes all my self-control and training to calmly walk slow circles around the carcass, snapping photos to document the scene. I go back to the truck to call in the incident, then heft the dead buck into the flatbed. The woods remain undisturbed while I work, bathed in grey light and echoing with the cries of migrating geese. _Don't psych yourself out of doing your job, Hewitt_ , I tell myself, and trudge out into the pines and the crimson sumac with my gun heavy and comforting at my hip.

A few hundred yards from the road I glimpse blaze orange between the trees and hear the low rumble of conversation. Up ahead, I find a pair of bow hunters field-dressing a doe and looking pleased with themselves. They're friendly and cooperative when they spot my game warden badge, showing off their carcass tag, taking out their hunting licenses without needing to be asked. When one of them mentions they've been in their blind since before dawn, I ask casually, "You guys happen to hear any gunshots today?" They both shake their heads. "Been out by County M at all?"

"Nope," one of them says. "We're parked up by Price Creek. Why do you ask?"

I shrug and pass him one of my business cards. "Just thinking there might be some folks out here trying to get a jump on gun deer season. Give me a call if you spot anything strange."

Back at the ranger station, my colleagues regard the buck with vague boredom. "Don't forget the youth hunt," Koehler offers, sipping coffee from his camo-patterned insulated mug. "A kid could have done it."

"I'd like to meet the kid who can make that clean a shot," I say. "Or the one who'd leave behind a rack like this. Besides, the youth hunt ended two weeks ago. This carcass is fresh."

"I guess. Write it up, but without a witness I don't know what to tell you." He crouches to inspect the exit wound and lets out a low whistle. "At least your poacher made a clean kill. The food shelf in Hayward will be happy to have the venison. And maybe the boss will let me take those antlers and stick them up in my den."

"Thank goodness for small mercies," I say, and go inside to start the paperwork. Koehler's right; cases like this one don't get solved. But I can't shake how certain I was of being watched while I stood at the roadside. This is a message, scrawled in buck's blood on the cold autumn ground and waiting for me to decipher it.

* * *

A week later, my work cell rings on my day off. I stop raking leaves and fumble the phone out of my jacket pocket. I don't recognize the number. "Hewitt."

"Is this Officer Tracy Hewitt? From the DNR?" A man's voice, unfamiliar.

"Speaking."

"My name's Nick Metzger. You gave me your card last weekend, when you were asking me and my brother about poachers up at Flambeau?"

Goosebumps sprout on my skin again. "I did. Do you have something new to report?"

"Maybe. Ain't sure. But I was down by Slough Gundy with my cousin and his wife and we saw something weird over by the river."

"Can you tell me more?" Under my breath, I ask Ethan to keep an eye on Logan while I go into the house and grab a notepad and pen. Michael's at the kitchen table, grading essays on _The Scarlet Letter_. He observes curiously as I scrawl notes and ask questions. When I hang up, I ask him, "Could you watch the boys for a bit? Something came up."

"Sure," he says. "Hurry back if you can. You've put in enough overtime this month."

"You can say that again." I glance out at the yard, where my children are pelting each other with handfuls of dry leaves. The leaf pile is already in disarray. I'll have to rake the yard all over again when I get back, but their joy is so palpable I almost don't mind. I strap on my duty belt and give Michael a kiss. "Just following up on a poaching case. Shouldn't take long."

Luckily, Metzger was carrying a GPS, and I can plug the coordinates he shared into my own unit. He and his party are long gone by the time I reach the spot he marked. I can't say I blame him. It's a beautiful stretch of river, with challenging rapids that draw a steady stream of canoers and kayakers during the summer months, but something about it has always left me uneasy. Maybe it's the proximity to the state prison lands, or just having seen how quickly a lazy day paddling the Flambeau can turn to tragedy. Regardless, I try not to patrol down here if I don't have to.

Metzger's coordinates have taken me far from any road, but when I reach them I immediately see what caught his attention. Another dead deer, a doe this time, lies cold and splayed against the pale trunk of a bare birch tree. But whatever killed this animal didn't bother with precision. The doe has been all but ripped apart. I'd write it off as normal predation - bears aren't unheard of in these parts - if it weren't for the trail of blood and entrails leading deeper into the woods. It feels like another invitation, and this time I can't ignore it.

I follow the line of gore for a few hundred feet to a small, shadowed clearing. Immediately, I know I'm not alone. Someone has pitched a small dome tent between two pines and strung a tattered blue tarp above it to serve as a makeshift fly. Piles of refuse are strewn around it. We see quite a few illegal encampments on state land - meth labs, or homeless people, or sex offenders who can't find housing - even, once or twice, escaped convicts from the state prison. Only a fool approaches a camp like this without backup. But as I'm reaching for my radio, the tent flap unzips and a bulky figure steps out.

In the fading late afternoon light, at this distance, I can't make out every detail, but I don't have to. I run. Despite all the rationalizations my mind can conjure, whatever came out of the tent is plainly and distinctly _not human_. It's bipedal, but its skin is green and scaly and a pair of horns like an ox's protrude from either side of its head. It has clawed hands and two huge tusk-like fangs, and there's something more than animal intelligence behind its red and yellow eyes. But what makes me flee from the woods with no hint of shame is how the creature speaks to me in a voice I recognize. What makes me flee is how it calls me by my name.

* * *

I make it back to my truck and head for the Kwik Trip on US-8. There, I sip sludgy coffee and munch a stale donut under the stark glare of fluorescent lights as I watch the highway and the parking lot. Only when I'm sure I haven't been followed do I drive the rest of the way home. Michael's left the porch light on, and by its orange glow I see the leaves from the backyard neatly bagged and lined up at the curb for garbage day. I'm smiling as I pull into the driveway.

Inside the house, it's dark except for the dim bulb over the sink and the flickering TV in the living room. Michael and the boys are slumped over on the sofa in a tangle of arms and legs, snoring and motionless. On the screen, a soft-spoken woman in pajamas is gently putting a star puppet to bed with more patience than I've ever been able to muster. I watch them for a while, feeling warm and strangely wistful, before I quietly wake Michael and break the spell.

Logan doesn't even stir as Michael carries him down the hall, but Ethan's eyes snap open when I set him down in his bed. "Mom?" he says in a voice thick with sleep.

"I'm here, kiddo. You're okay. Close your eyes." He nods, and I sit down on the edge of his bed and rub slow circles across his back as I hoarsely sing the song that's been his lullaby ever since he was an infant. "I took my love, I took it down, climbed a mountain and I turned around…" As usual, he's asleep long before I reach the end.

I tiptoe out of Ethan's room and close the door softly behind me. Michael has shut off the TV and retreated to our bedroom, but I don't join him yet. Instead I'm standing frozen in front of a photograph I've seen every day for years without really looking at it: Michael's and my wedding portrait. We're standing somewhat stiffly on the chancel of my parents' church, him in his cheap tux and me in my grandmother's wedding dress, twelve days removed from our college graduation and without the faintest idea of what we were getting into. I know the smiling, flushed face of the young bride in the photograph is still my face despite all the changes I've been through since my humid June wedding day. The creature I glimpsed in the forest had a face like that, too. Underneath the horns and tusks and scales, the creature could have been me.

* * *

Halloween arrives a few days later, and I take Ethan and Logan trick-or-treating around our neighborhood. They're young enough to tire of walking long before they've filled their threadbare pillowcases with candy. I usher them back home, the beams of their jack-o'-lantern-shaped flashlights bobbing sleepily through the cold October darkness. Once I've coaxed the boys out of their superhero costumes, calmed their jittery sugar-fueled bodies, and tucked them in for the night, I kiss Michael good-bye and head out to my truck. I've told him I'm tracking some poachers and need to set up some trail cameras when no one's around to see me placing them. It isn't entirely a lie.

I park at the river landing on the south fork of the Flambeau and set out into the woods again. This time, I came prepared: flannel undergarments layered beneath my down jacket, a thermos of coffee, pockets full of hand warmers, my sidearm and my radio at my belt. I'm not sure what I'm expecting to accomplish by going back to the clearing where I saw the creature. I'm even less sure of why I even expect to find it there again. But I won't be able to rest until I understand what I saw. The place is deserted when I arrive, the tattered dome tent empty. But someone's built a fire in a makeshift ring of rocks, and the ashes are still warm. I won't be alone for long.

I conceal myself behind a nearby pile of brush and wait. Perhaps an hour later, a tall, horned figure emerges soundlessly from between the trees and crouches next to the fire ring to blow on the smoldering coals. As the flames spring back to life, I get my first good look at the creature - and to my horror, I discover that the first time around, I really did see what I saw. It - _she_ \- has my face, my build, my hair, my mannerisms. But the rest of her is all wrong, even beyond the horns and the tusks and the claws and the green scaly skin. A ridge of sharp, protruding bones begins at her hairline; judging by the row of lumps under her stained and ripped parka, they must run all the way down her back. A stubby, spiked tail juts out from the base of her spine. _Like the Hodag,_ I think, _but the Hodag isn't real. I must be losing my mind._

This Hodag sets down the pair of dead rabbits she's carrying, and the rifle she must have used to shoot them. Its blaze pink camouflage stock is distinctive. I remember taking the statement from the teenage girl who reported it stolen out of her father's truck during the youth hunt a few weeks before. But I'm not as threatened by the gun as I am by the sound of her voice - _my_ voice - as she tosses a log on the fire. "I know you're here. I can smell you. Come out. Let's talk."

I stand up slowly and step into the clearing without taking my eyes off the rifle. She notices, and kicks the gun away in the direction of the tent, out of her reach. It doesn't calm me down. "I see you got my messages," she says. "Took you long enough to respond."

"Who are you?" I say, resisting the urge to draw my .357.

"You don't know? Damn. They told me you might not. It would be easier if you already did."

"I don't have time to play around. Tell me why you lured me here. Tell me who you are."

"I could ask the same of you, _Trace_." The Hodag speaks my name venomously and with a sideways smirk I've seen before in photographs of myself. Slowly, deliberately, she picks up one of the rabbits and takes a bite out of its belly, fur and entrails and all. Her bloodied teeth are sharp and yellowed in her wide mouth. My stomach turns over as she chews and swallows. "And I didn't lure you here. I _invited_ you. I had to see if he even bothered to do a good job."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Can I tell you a story?" She doesn't wait for my response. "Once upon a time, there was a girl who was a game warden. She was good at her job, but she didn't always know it. So when the dispatcher put out the call about the little boy who went missing from the Connors Lake campground, she went down to Slough Gundy on her own to check things out. She didn't want to tell anyone else how she always had a bad feeling about that place. Or how she was wondering if the missing little boy might be trying to visit his daddy in prison. No, if she told them, they might all think she was too flighty and hormonal to do her job. She'd heard how those men talked about women who've just had a baby."

"How do you know all this?" I remember the search for the boy in question, who was found safely napping under a beached canoe two hundred feet from his family's campsite a few hours after the DNR got involved. The kid wasn't gone long enough for the public to hear about his brief disappearance, let alone his father's criminal history. The Hodag is right - I certainly never told anybody about the minor detour I made to the area around the prison before I convinced myself my hunch was ridiculous and went back to rejoin the search party at the campground. I never even told Michael how desperate I felt to prove myself and keep up with other officers when I came back to work after having Logan.

"Because I was there." The Hodag sits back on her heels and stares at me. Red firelight plays across her twisted features as she picks out bits of the rabbit's carcass to gnaw on between sentences. "So this girl went into the woods alone, and she didn't tell anybody else where she was going. And not far away from this very clearing, she thought she heard a little boy crying. It sounded like it was coming from inside this big patch of brambles. And all she could think about was how it sounded like _her_ little boys, and how she wouldn't want anyone's baby to be lost and frightened for a second longer than he had to be. So she didn't call for backup, and she pushed her way into the bramble patch, even though the thorns kept scratching her. No matter how far she went, there were always more thorns, and the crying kept getting farther and farther away. And finally, when she made it through the hedge, she was somewhere else entirely."

Her tone is calm, her words hypnotic, and it's all I can do to fight back against the sheer impossibility of her story. "That never happened to me," I mumble.

"You're right, it didn't. But it happened to me. Someone was waiting for me on the other side of the hedge. He must have liked what he saw, because he gathered me up. _Collected_ me, so he could change me into this. The Curator tries to find people who are kind, but a little wild too, and make them into legends from the places they're from." The Hodag scratches absently at her collarbone, and I notice for the first time the neat, thick, raised scar running down the side of her neck. I remember learning how the original Hodag was nothing but creative taxidermy, parts of different animals stitched together, and taste bile. She turns slowly toward me, expressionless. "But I was lucky. I got away."

"How?"

"I don't really remember. His hunting grounds were idle, and I must have seen a gap in the hedge and decided to go for it. I came out a long way from home." Her eyes go momentarily distant and glassy. "But I was lucky again. Some people were there on the other side to help me, people who had been through the same sort of thing I'd been through. They picked me up, took me in, explained some things to me. Like you."

I want to run away, to block out the noise of her ravings, but some part of me demands I stay and hear it. "I still don't understand."

"The Curator doesn't like to leave loose ends. If he'd just taken me away, someone would have reported me missing within hours. Another officer. Or Michael. The Curator had to make sure no one would know I was gone. So he made a copy of me, out of meat and bones and wire and whatever he could find, and sent it away to live my life for me. He made _you_."

Already I'm backing away from her, my heart pounding rapidly in my ears. She stands up, drops the rabbit, matches me pace for pace. "You're crazy," I say. "All of this is impossible." But what frightens me most is how some part of me, dark and hidden and unknown to me before tonight, hears her wild claims and thinks, _She could be right._ "I'm not going to sit here and listen to this bullshit. Move along. I'd better not see you out here again."

The Hodag smirks again. "You say that like I plan on letting you leave."

She's on me before I can react, tackling me and knocking me over, her reflexes faster than mine have ever been. _"You stole my life,"_ she hisses as she pins me to the ground. _"Give it back."_ Her filthy hands scrabble for my throat. Her bloodshot yellow eyes are wide and wild, and I wonder if the same feral passion has ever lurked in mine.

I kick and scratch against her, trying to remember the self-defense training I haven't needed in years. She grabs my neck and squeezes. _God, she's strong._ I can't breathe, can't reach my gun, can't even call out for help. Panic takes over. I seize her wrists, arch my back, and heave with all my might until I roll us both over on our sides. I still can't break her grip, but without the aid of gravity, the pressure on my windpipe eases up.

A deafening, high-pitched squeal splits the air. The Hodag freezes, looking around in confusion. A moment later I realize what's happened: the motion of rolling over turned up the volume knob of my radio, producing a loud burst of feedback. Sensing my chance, I bat away the Hodag's clawed hands and scramble blindly backwards, groping for the radio at my belt. "11-99," I shout into it, unsure if I'm even pressing the "talk" button. "11-99, Flambeau River State Forest, near Slough Gundy." Whether or not anyone's listening, it has the desired effect. The Hodag knows as surely as I do that any law enforcement officer in the county who hears my call for help will be on their way within minutes. Whatever she wants from me, she doesn't want an audience for it. Without a backward glance, she grabs her stolen rifle from where she discarded it and sprints away into the frigid night.

* * *

I hastily cancel my distress call as soon as the Hodag flees, but Koehler, a highway patrol officer, and a few sheriff's deputies still show up to make sure I'm okay. I don't want to admit how relieved I am, but I'm sure they can tell. Even Koehler suppresses his usual instinct to minimize and tease when he sees the bruises the Hodag's fingers left on my neck. I file as truthful a report as I can manage, claiming that an unknown person camping illegally in the forest caught me unaware while I was following up on Nick Metzger's tip. My superiors will undoubtedly scold me for my reckless decision to investigate alone at night, but I'd rather get reprimanded than explain why I was really out there, or tell anyone else about what the Hodag said to me.

I go back to the clearing the next morning in the company of a few well-armed fellow game wardens. There's no sign of the Hodag, and most of her supplies are gone too. I'm not surprised. The other officers write her off as a strung-out meth addict and remind me to radio for backup if I see her on state lands again. I already know I'll see her again, and I won't call it in when I do.

But the next few weeks pass uneventfully, full of the usual assortment of trespassing citations and bow-hunting mishaps and vehicles colliding with deer. On the last Sunday before the deer opener, we drive down to Chippewa Falls for our traditional early Thanksgiving celebration with Michael's Aunt Deborah and her wife and the rest of the Hewitt family. As always, they've cooked a ridiculous amount of food - turkey and ham and mashed potatoes and green bean casserole and more - and we all end the meal feeling happily stuffed, warm and cared for.

Later, when the table is cleared and the dishwasher is softly humming in the kitchen, most of the adults settle down in the family room with a case of Spotted Cow and the Packers game on TV. Ethan, his cousins, and some of the younger aunts and uncles head outside to toss a Nerf football around in the front yard. Logan is peacefully napping on Michael's lap. I should feel as relaxed as everyone else does, but I can't shake the all-too-familiar feeling of being watched.

I go out to the front yard under the pretense of checking on the game outside. It's one of the last perfect late autumn days we'll get before winter comes: crisp and clear, with the bare branches of trees sketched black against the blue sky and woodsmoke scenting the air. The kids and their relatives are muddy and laughing as they pass the ball back and forth, oblivious to the rust-covered powder blue Oldsmobile parked across the street. I know who's behind the wheel even before I see the silhouette of the Hodag's horns through the window. The car has Illinois plates, and I don't want to think about where or how she might have gotten it.

She rolls down the window when she sees me crossing the street. "Is there a problem, Officer?"

The only thing I can think of to say is, "You're going to scare the kids if they see you here."

The Hodag shakes her head. "They can't see me like you do unless I let them. You and me, though, we both always know what we are." She leans over and opens the passenger side door. "Get in. I want to talk to you."

"You tried to kill me."

"You really think I'd try it again in front of my whole family?"

I can't argue with that. I walk around the car and sit down next to her, pulling the door shut behind me. "Listen, you can't be here."

"I was here a long time before you were. You remember Ethan's first Thanksgiving, when he pooped all over Michael's grandpa?"

"Of course I do. But I'm not going to sit here while you reminisce about my kids. I told you. You _can't_ be here."

Her nostrils flare, her jaw clenches, and her grip tightens on the steering wheel. When she speaks again, her voice is pinched, and she stares directly ahead through the cracked windshield instead of looking at me. "You ever wonder why I'm here, instead of back at the Curator's game preserve? It's because for three years, while I was hunting and being hunted and killing and dying and getting stitched back up to be his prey all over again...The one thing, the _only_ thing that kept me from becoming the animal he wanted me to be was the knowledge that my children were back home waiting for me. I guess I'm glad someone else was here for them when I wasn't. But they're not yours. They never were. You've served your purpose, Trace. You need to accept it and let me have my life back."

"Not going to happen," I say flatly. "And I'd better not see you around my family again."

Without warning, the Hodag starts the car. I open the door and hurriedly stagger out before she stomps on the accelerator and speeds away - engine backfiring, tires squealing, exhaust billowing. Ethan looks at me curiously as I cross the street. His cheeks are flushed with exertion, and there are new rips in the knees of his mud-stained jeans. "Who were you talking to, Mom?"

"Just somebody from work," I say. He shrugs and goes back to his football game. I wish it were so easy for me to forget the things I've heard.

* * *

But a few days later, the beginning of gun deer season arrives and temporarily crowds out everything else. I work every day from before sunrise until after sunset, checking tags and licenses, getting paramedics to the scenes of heart attacks and falls from tree stands and car accidents, answering an unending stream of questions from hunters, enforcing the law. My family is accustomed to not seeing much of me for the nine days the season lasts. But things go smoothly on the last day, and my sergeant dismisses me in the early evening, just in time to say goodnight to the boys.

Ethan and Logan are already in their pajamas by the time I get home, but they perk up when they see me and stay alert long enough to let me read them a few stories. "I'm sorry I wasn't home to tuck you in this week, kiddo," I say to Logan as I sit beside his toddler bed. "It'll get better now."

"It's okay, mama," says Logan, unconcerned. "You came to sing the song to me."

A chill runs down my spine. "What do you mean?"

"You singed it outside my window. 'Climbed a mountain and I turned around.'"

I want to write it off as a child's overactive imagination, but I can't. When both boys are asleep, I go outside to walk around the house. I know what I'll see at Logan's bedroom window before I even switch on my flashlight. Smudges on the outer windowpane, as if someone had pressed their face against the glass. And in the damp soil of the flowerbed beneath, the prints of two hiking boots, exactly my size.

* * *

I don't know how I know where to find the Hodag. Even so, when I walk up to the closed-down canoe camp on the north fork of the Flambeau, she's waiting for me there in the middle of the night. I haven't bothered with stealth, and when the beam from my headlamp plays across her deformed visage, she says, "I knew you'd come back."

"I told you to stay away from my family," I say.

"I told you the same thing." She stands up from the rock she's sitting on and stretches theatrically. Her gaze flickers toward her rifle, which is leaning against a nearby tree trunk.

"Keep your hands where I can see them." I unsnap my holster.

"They told me not to do this, either," says the Hodag. "I mean, the people who helped me after I escaped. When I found out you existed, they said I should either kill you and get it over with, or forget about you and accept my new life. They said talking to you wouldn't accomplish anything. The worst part is, they were probably right. But I had to try anyway. I guess I thought if I told you the truth, you would understand who you really were and why you had to step aside, and nobody else would get hurt."

"I would have done the same thing."

"I know that, too." The Hodag bares her sharp teeth and takes a quick, abrupt step toward the rifle, then another. "He made you too well."

"Don't move," I say. My voice is shrill and horrified as I draw my pistol and aim. "Final warning."

But she doesn't stop. Three more paces and she reaches the tree. Her claws close around the rifle's stock and she swings the barrel toward me. "You won't do it," she half-screams, "you won't because _I can't_ ," and then I pull the trigger.

My shot hits her at center mass, just like I was trained to do. I fire again, and again, and she collapses on the frozen ground, gurgling and convulsing. I kneel next to her as her movements slow and then cease. I owe it to her to remain present for at least this much. I stay there until I can no longer ignore the uncomfortable truth that there's a dead body in front of me and her chest is full of three rounds from my service pistol.

Distantly relieved to be wearing gloves, I pull down the tarp the Hodag had been using for shelter and wrap her up in it, along with her stolen rifle and her other meager possessions. I kick dirt and dead leaves over the blood-soaked patch where she fell. Then I drag the corpse out of the woods and heave it into the bed of my truck, bundling it in another tarp for good measure. There's some blood on my outerwear, and I cover the driver's seat with my emergency blanket so I won't stain my vehicle's interior.

I do my best to drive normally, bizarrely convinced that the drivers and passengers of every other car on the highway can tell what I've done and what I'm carrying. The consequences of being made to stop for any reason are terrifying. But the roads aren't busy this time of night, and I reach my destination, the national forest to the north, without incident. Far into the woods, I park on a two-lane bridge and peer over the guardrail into the murky swamp below. Here, the depths will take her in and wash away the evidence of what I've done, until the fish eat her flesh and the muck corrodes her belongings and no one but me will ever know there was once another me in this world.

Before I can lose my nerve, I drag the Hodag's body out of the bed of my truck and heave it over the side, into the swamp. The thin ice splinters under its weight. The tarp has come askew in the process of hauling it around, and by the faint light of the moon I glimpse my own pale face and its final expression of shock. Then the film of frost over the water gives way and the cold blackness drinks her down beneath its surface, and I am alone in the woods once more.

* * *

I get back on the highway and drive until I reach a 24-hour truck stop, all but deserted now apart from truckers sleeping fitfully in their rigs. The first snow of the winter has just begun to fall, and the parking lot is blanketed in a thickening layer of grey slush. Undoubtedly, it will also cover the evidence back at the campsite and render it unidentifiable and unremarkable by spring.

I toss my blood-soiled garments in a dumpster behind the building, check my appearance in my rearview mirror to make sure I'm presentable, and pay cash for a shower to wash the last traces of the Hodag away. In the grimy stall, under a stream of iron-scented, scalding hot water, my path is clear for the first time in weeks. I'll go back to my job, to my home, to my family. I'll love my husband and care for our children as they grow. I won't think about the Hodag anymore, or the body that looks just like mine decomposing at the bottom of the swamp. And I'll do my best to ignore the face staring back at me from the hazy mirror as I comb out my hair with my fingers, the deer skull balanced crookedly on a spinal column made of dry branches and the carrion meat hanging down like rags and the barbed wire binding my makeshift joints together, the face the Hodag said had always been my only real face. There has always been a wilderness inside me, untamed and unexplored before now, and my new duty is to spend the rest of my life ensuring that no one ever visits it again - especially not myself.

After all, I know exactly who I am.

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to thank my partner Z for beta reading this story.
> 
> Some related background reading for anyone who'd like to know more about this story's setting:  
> [The Flambeau River State Forest](http://dnr.wi.gov/topic/stateforests/flambeauriver/), northern Wisconsin, USA, where most of the events of the story take place.  
> [The history of the Hodag](http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/hodag_the_legendary_ugly_smelly_beast_of_wisconsin), a genuine fake folkloric beast from the region.


End file.
